micro-ROS Dockers

This repository contains Docker-related material aimed at setting up, configuring and developing a micro-ROS-based application.

This set of Dockerfiles provides ready-to-use environments to easily execute micro-ROS examples in your host machine, as well as to use the standalone micro-ROS build system. In addition, two images are provided that allow using micro-ROS as an external library, both in ESP-IDF.

The Docker images can be found at dockerhub.

The available images are listed below:

Image	Description	Status
base	Base image with a ROS 2 Jazzy installation + micro-ROS specific build system tools. Used as base of any other micro-ROS image
micro-ros-agent	Image containing a pre-compiled micro-ROS-Agent, ready to use as a standalone application
micro-ros-demos	Contains pre-compiled micro-ROS demo applications, ready to use to get a taste of micro-ROS capabilities
micro_ros_static_library_builder	Allows to use a pre-compiled micro-ROS library to develop applications in external environments
micro-ros-olimex-nuttx	Contains a ready to flash example for Olimex STM32 E407
esp-idf-microros	Allows to use micro-ROS as a component of the ESP-IDF build system

Pre-requisites

You need to have Docker in your system. For installing Docker, refer to the official documentation at https://www.docker.com/.

Usage

To get an image, use the docker pull command:

• e.g. docker pull microros/base

You can select the preferred tag by appending :tag to the image name

• e.g. docker pull microros/base:jazzy

Once you have the image locally, type docker run to start it. It is not mandatory, although usually useful, to launch your containers using the --rm and --net=host flags:

• e.g. docker run -it --rm --net=host microros/micro-ros-agent:jazzy

--rm makes sure that the docker image will be removed after exiting. --net=host provides the container with the same network access as the host. -it allocates a pseudo-TTY for you and keeps stdin listening. Another used command is -v to map local files with docker container ones. -v is useful in case you may want to flash boards from within a Docker container.

base image

It is the base for the rest of the containers. It contains the necessary micro-ROS setup tools and dependencies. From this image, you can start any development targeting micro-ROS.

micro-ros-agent

This image is meant to be used as a stand-alone application. It includes the installation of the ROS 2 version selected by the tag selected, together with a micro-ROS Agent. The entry point of this image is directly the micro-ROS Agent, so upon execution of docker run you will be facing the micro-ROS Agent command line input. Running:

• e.g. docker run -it --net=host microros/micro-ros-agent:jazzy udp4 -p 9999

will start a micro-ROS Agent listening to UDP messages on port 9999.

micro-ros-demos

micro-ros-demos is one of the example images. With this image, you can launch example applications using micro-ROS (compiled for Linux machines). This image entry point has a ROS 2 environment set up with micro-ROS examples. You can run regular ROS 2 tools to launch the examples.

• eg: docker run -it --net=host microros/micro-ros-demos bash

The currently available examples are listed here.

micro-ros-olimex-nuttx (unmaintained)

This image provides you with a ready-to-flash firmware for Olimex-STM32-E407 boards with demos included. To be able to flash, you need to map your devices to the Docker container as follows:

• e.g. docker run -it --privileged -v /dev/bus/usb:/dev/bus/usb microros/micro-ros-olimex-nuttx:jazzy

Once inside the container, you can flash the board by running scripts/flash.sh from the firmware/NuttX directory.

There you can find a publisher and a subscriber examples. Both examples use serial transport to communicate with a micro-ROS Agent, so you should start an Agent with the same transport (You can use the micro-ros-agent image to do so). Once a Client-Agent communication is established you can use ROS 2 tools to view the publications from the Olimex or to publish messages to it.

micro_ros_static_library_builder

The micro_ros_static_library_builder docker image provides you with a set of include files and pre-compiled micro-ROS libraries to develop your micro-ROS application within the Arduino IDE environment. To be able to use it, use the following command to instantiate a container of this image:

• e.g. docker run -it -v $(pwd):/arduino_project --net=host microros/micro_ros_static_library_builder:jazzy.

Note that folders added to extras/library_generation/extra_packages and entries added to extras/library_generation/extra_packages/extra_packages.repos will be taken into account by this build system.

esp-idf-microros

This Docker image allows you to use micro-ROS as a component of the ESP-IDF build system.

To use it:

• e.g. docker run -it --user espidf --volume="/etc/timezone:/etc/timezone:ro" -v $(pwd):/micro_ros_espidf_component -v /dev:/dev --privileged --workdir /micro_ros_espidf_component microros/esp-idf-microros:latest /bin/bash"

Then, you can navigate to your example aplications and build it using the ESP IDF buildtool system script, idf.py menuconfig/build/flash/monitor.

Automated builds

These Dockerfiles are used for automatically creating images on Docker Hub. These builds are tagged with the ROS 2 version they will be compatible with: e.g. foxy, rolling... The latest tag will always correspond to the latest release of ROS 2.

These automatic builds have a direct relationship with the content of the micro-ROS repositories:

Apart from GitHub repositories changes, a build can be triggered whenever the base image is updated on Docker Hub. Base images are specified with the FROM: directive in the Dockerfile.

Purpose of the Project

This software is not ready for production use. It has neither been developed nor tested for a specific use case. However, the license conditions of the applicable Open Source licenses allow you to adapt the software to your needs. Before using it in a safety relevant setting, make sure that the software fulfills your requirements and adjust it according to any applicable safety standards, e.g., ISO 26262.

License

This repository is open-sourced under the Apache-2.0 license. See the LICENSE file for details.

For a list of other open-source components included in this repository, see the file 3rd-party-licenses.txt.

Known Issues/Limitations

There are no known limitations.

If you find issues, please report them.